SO, I have went through a bunch of ww2 games to check the reload time of some arty units, as well as heavy tanks.

interestingly enough, I found that the new reload times for heavy tanks that we currently have in Bk Mod, is actually accurate and almost identical to how it is represented in various games such as Men Of War, War Thunder, and World of Tanks.. altogether! For instance, the basic reload time for the Tiger1 in War thunder is 10 seconds, in MoW it's 9 seconds, in WoT it's 10 seconds as well.. can get lower of course with better crew or veterancy, but these are the basic reload time values in all those games.

in Bk Mod the Tiger1 now reloads in 8-9 seconds... So, currently Bk Mod has similar values as all those other games, which is so far so great!

What doesn't match up however, is the reload time for arty units.. in Bk Mod it's a complete mess, no wonder "arty" in Bk Mod has always been very annoying and "nasty" if I could say.

For example, M7 Priest in WoT reloads in 20 seconds. The tank does not exist in War Thunder, but in MoW it reloads in about 20 seconds as well.in Bk mod, the Priest reloads in 6 seconds.. which is utter ridiculous.

So, I kept checking all arty units and heavy tanks.. reload times for heavy tanks were more or less matching up, but the arty in BK Mod always had highest rate of fire for some reason!

On the last patch, heavy tanks in Bk Mod received longer reload times.. becoming the same as most other ww2 games, which is great... However, what about arty units?

Now, here comes the tricky part.. if arty will reload in 15 seconds in Bk Mod, then it will be sort of useless.. but how about this following idea?

- The so called "barrage ability" will be removed from all arty units.- All arty units will receive the same barrage ability as the Grille.

So, the "random barrage" will not be possible.. this is something only rocket arty will be able to do.

As for the self-propelled arty.. they will have single-shot arty barrage abilities that would allow them to hit a certain area with great precision.. but in return, the cool-down time of the ability will be representing the ACTUAL reload time of these units.. so the Priest cool-down time for the ability will be 20 seconds, for the Hummel it will be 30 seconds.. and so on.

So, basically.. all self-propelled arty vehicles will work similarly to the Grille, but with correct cool-down times that represent the real reload times.

This way, rate of fire for arty will be realistic.. and at the same time they will be still very effective and precise.

Simply put, this is a horrible idea.In WoT and War Thunder, the SPGs are very differently balanced due to how these games work, so I'll disregard these examples.

MoW is a strategy title and therefore more similar to BK, but there's still some marked differences.In MoW you have much more fine control over your individual units and also have a RPG-Style inventory management, limiting ammo supply but also allowing for direct control over your fire, with great accuracy. If that had a high RoF it would again be hard to balance.

However, BK is larger scale and focuses less on individual unit control; you can't make a Priest fire 1 shot at a specific target and know exactly where it hits, and that's by design.

As for the reload times, though: The guns used in the Priest had a maximum RoF of 10 Rounds/minute, so 6 seconds reload is actually right. The problem is, that this required the crew to have those shells ready at hand, which meant that once the shells in the combat compartment were fired they would have to get shells out of the storage, which took more time and dropped real world performance in sustained fire scenarios.

Since we have no sustained fire in BK, the cooldown is basically the time to restock the combat compartment, then the unit is again ready to fire a volley at peak RoF.

Some thought has been given to this in the past and there's a reason why the Grille is the only unit that works in this single shot fashion (being a 150mm piece based off a WW1 infantry gun, not a proper howitzer like the Hummel).

"Normal people belive... if it ain't broke, don't fix it.Engineers believe... if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet." - Scott Adams

As we can see, the Priest has 2 different 105mm guns.. both have a reload time of approximately 20 seconds, meaning 3 or 4 rounds per minute!

Game-play wise, of course World of Tanks, War Thunder and Men of War are totally different... However, in Bk Mod heavy tanks now have the same reload time as ALL those other games.. but arty in Bk Mod always has highest rate of fire. While the other 3 games seem to be providing very similar rate of fire values for arty units, just as they do for heavy tanks.

So, the big question remains:if Bk Mod is supposed to be totally different from those games (game-play wise) then why the reload times for heavy tanks in Bk Mod were recently modified to be same as those games?

in Bk Mod the Tiger1 had a reload of 5-6 seconds, but now it has 8-9 seconds.. which is now same as War Thunder, Men of War and Word of Tanks! So my point is; before the last patch.. heavy tanks in Bk Mod used to reload FASTER than arty units. However, after the last patch.. heavy tanks in Bk Mod are now reloading SLOWER than arty units! And I think this is a serious problem, because such 105mm or 150mm guns shouldn't be reloading faster than 88mm or 90mm guns...

1. I dont want all howitzers as acting like Grille with GPS guided shells style. That doesnt fit at all in a ww2 scenario. A shot would cost what? 25 ammo? things would get worse bc every 20 seconds there comes a shot sniping your AT gun, then 20 secs later your HMG at a very different location. In Bk you have to think: is its worth to pay 50 amm and wasting perhaps 6 shots against a target? Often its not. With that change it wouldnt matter bc a shot with a guranteed hit is super cheap and you know you hit the target. That would be a horrible change. I do hate btw how Grille fires and would rather have it as a short range 150 mm infantry support howitzer in style of the leig 18. The Grille would make 3 shots from a range approx 120-130. It wasnt a long range howitzer and was designated as "Infantry Gun". The heaviest ever made.

2. CoH is a fast game with quick moves. 20 sec between the shots would make arty fail in their concept. They were usually used beforhand of an attack to cripple defenses, enemie support lines, deny access to certain areas and so on. They were not sniper units to take out individual units. Thats something thats being currently developed and tested with GPS guided ammunition.

Compare this to loading conditons in a tank. Sustained rate of fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXYRQjzZZbk&t=211she speaks of a rof of 4 (4 rpm).So we got extremely realistic reload values for sustained rate of fire of tanks and barrage rof for artillery (up to 105 at least).

4. WoT is a whole different thing. There arty is more sniping. You have that circle (all guns) that gets smaller the longer you aim at one spot. The smaller this circle the bigger the chance to hit. In WoT they dont fire barrages but instead make Grille style sniper shots which is everything but realistic. The target has to stay at that location for a long time.

5.And finally i had no issues with howitzer arty at all. In a 3 vs 3 we hot shelled by Priests nonstop but only vet 3 priest was able to take out my stationary Ostwind. All other arty didnt do much to units except AT guns and weapon crews but thats what arty is made for. Inf and tanks got crippled but not whiped nonstop or only by exzessive use which again requires mutliple guns with vet status. I already wrote markr about that positiv findings compared to previous versions in which arty shelled everything to death. And for the first time ever it was possible that allied tank lauses were not caused by arty alone in 40-60% of all losses.

As we can see, the Priest has 2 different 105mm guns.. both have a reload time of approximately 20 seconds, meaning 3 or 4 rounds per minute!

Well, I can tell you where that 3 rounds/minute default comes from;To prevent overheating of the breach block and to avoid premature detonation of loaded rounds because of that heat build-up, operational guidelines set by the US Army ordnance board state that the maximum sustained rate of fire for the M1/M2/M2A1/M3 etc line of howitzers (they were all pretty much the same with some small differences in features, M7 Priest and its variants M7B1 and M7B2 used the M2A1 or M3 variants) is 3 rounds/minute.

However, this could be exceeded if it was deemed necessary for short periods.

Unfortunately, I can't find an example of how fast it was fired by US troops.I CAN give a post-war example instead, because the very same gun was later redesignated the M101 howitzer and was used, among others, by the german Bundeswehr (it's apparently still in service by the Wachbattalion for the purpose of firing salutes onm proper occasions), and those guys tried the limits of the gun, reaching (with a well trained crew) a burst rate of fire of 10 rounds per minute - so the gun COULD handle that for a while, and I can't imagine actual combat units during WW2 not making use of that, especially considering that the Priest had enough ammo stored in the combat compartment to fire such a burst before having to slow down anyway due to having to bring up shells from the ammo magazine.

"Normal people belive... if it ain't broke, don't fix it.Engineers believe... if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet." - Scott Adams

Well, maybe my idea to add single-shot abilities for all arty units, being similar to the Grille wasn't the best idea.. though, it was just an idea. Away from that... I'm just waiting keenly to see how MarKr is going to tweak 95mm arty, HotchKiss, Priest and Calliope on the next release.

If the "arty" would be still broken even after the next release.. then I'm afraid to say that there will be no chance for this Mod to keep going any further with me. What I mean is; I'm already so demotivated how the "arty" in particular caused my last collaboration to fail, I guess you know very well what I'm talking about here, Kr0noZ. Luckily though, we will be able to give it another try.. but; we can only fail once due to such a thing, a 2nd time failure would only have a severe negative outcome. However... If the 2nd try succeeds hopefully, it will be a glorious positive result then.. highly depends on the next patch. I mean that Bk Mod is 10 years old, errors can only be so disgraceful and disappointing, anyone coming back to it can only expect it to be nearly perfect, and not still having such errors somehow!

Why come back when it had aldready be explained several time 3 rounds per minutes is for long arty preparation and not for sustained fire.

Wot as source ? really ?

War thunder is bit more reliable but only for some stat, not for all so far.

Point there plenty of exemple form Wot and WT to up allied tanks to astonishing level and nerf germans one equally.

For priest RoF there is no historical fact that can back a RoF nerf demand. If an hypothetical nerf is really needed, argumentation will have to be something else than historical facts.

Nota ; From what I know german arty was the weakest of the major power on European theater. Often archaic, mostly relying on horses for logistic, outgunned and out ranged by Russian arty, hopelessly outnumbered and technological retarded in front of USA arty.

Nota nebelwerfer ;

For nebelwerfer BK RoF is a bit too high. Real RoF is more likely 1.5 sec (a salvo of sixth in 10 secondes). But it have few impact ingame. More interesting is Nebelwefer accuracy. At operational range only half of the rockets are able to fall in an area equal to soccer terrain. Roughly it is a so inaccurate weapon that it can be efficient only in great number with saturation tactic.

Jalis wrote:Why come back when it had aldready be explained several time 3 rounds per minutes is for long arty preparation and not for sustained fire.

Hmm; sir.. this sentence is irritating me!I mean... With all due respect, but if you are going to talk to me like this, then I can also respond and say; Why would YOU come here at all when we are discussing PvP and not Skirmish?

And I don't understand why you are coming up with such statements comparing German arty vs USA arty now... Here I'm talking generally about arty rate of fire, from a PvP perspective.. just with a historical background.

So, I created this topic.. not because of historical facts, but cuz of PvP balance... And I have already mentioned several PvP reasons on different topics why should arty units like Priest and Hummel have longer reload.. let it be 2 seconds more reload or even 15 seconds more reload, it doesn't matter.. but more reload is fundamentally required from a PvP perspective, also for rocket artillery.. which I have already mentioned on other topics as well.

I didn't use WoT as historical reference... Clearly, i used WoT (and other ww2 games) to compare the reload times for heavy tanks with Bk Mod.

And the result was:- Heavy tanks current reload times in Bk Mod = Heavy tanks reload times in WoT, WT, and MoW. However; - Arty units reload times in Bk Mod < Arty units reload times in all other ww2 games.

And thus, I just had to point this out.. so there is nothing you need to correct.

There is major difference between COH/BK and other WW2 games For pure arty (Rocket is an other matter).

Coh works with salvo system, usually 6, with a rather long cooldown. Other game usually use sustained fire.

A guy who dont know anything about bk would certainly be surprise and ask ; '' why arty stop to fire after only sixth rounds ? there is no reason ''. It dont shock them because we re bk formatted.

Just to say there is no comparaison possible between bk that use more or less historical maximum rof for short period, and other games.Based on that, the only nerf you can ask is for the hummel, not for the priest. But I m not sure I can remember last time you ask for an axis nerf.

summary

Jalis wrote:For priest RoF there is no historical fact that can back a RoF nerf demand. If an hypothetical nerf is really needed, argumentation will have to be something else

Tiger1996 wrote: And I have already mentioned several PvP reasons on different topics why should arty units like Priest and Hummel have longer reload.. let it be 2 seconds more reload or even 15 seconds more reload, it doesn't matter.. but more reload is fundamentally required from a PvP perspective, also for rocket artillery.. which I have already mentioned on other topics as well.

I disagree with this. They have the same rof since ages and everyone is used to it.

To come back to the subject ; I m even no inclined to nerf Hummel Rof To 20, simply because it would made it useless or only viable against nest/bunker/building. All other target would have leave the bombardement zone before the second shell.

I took a look on bk data, and imo your best chance is to ask a parity with the wespe. that would raise RoF to 7-8 instead of 6-6. The only argumentation to oppose that would be to say priest in on the only faction who clearly claim its specialty in artillery (that would justify higher RoF).